Survey time:

ChangeWave asked 254 new Kindle Fire owners a series of questions regarding their overall satisfaction and key likes and dislikes, to gauge their reaction to the new tablet device.

Customer Satisfaction. When asked how satisfied they are with their new tablet device, better than one-in-two Kindle Fire owners (54%) say they are Very Satisfied. Another 38% say they are Somewhat Satisfied.

In previous ChangeWave surveys we've found that the percentage of tablet owners who say they are Very Satisfied with a particular device is highly predictive of future demand for that device. So how does the Amazon tablet rating match up against other tablet devices?

While the 54% Very Satisfied rating for the Kindle Fire is considerably below the 74% rating of the industry leading Apple iPad*, it is higher than the 49% average rating for all of the other tablet devices combined.

The 254 sample is probably large enough to be representative of 4m owners. The satisfaction for "other" tablets was 39% in a November survey by ChangeWave. That's pretty low.

"Amazon.com today announced that Kindle devices remain the hottest products this holiday season – for the third week in a row, customers are purchasing well over 1 million Kindle devices per week, and Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 11 weeks ago. To learn more about the all-new Kindle family – the $79 Kindle, $99 Kindle Touch, $149 Kindle Touch 3G and the $199 Kindle Fire – visit www.amazon.com/kindle.

“Kindle Fire is the most successful product we’ve ever launched – it’s the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we’ve already sold millions of units, and we’re building millions more to meet the high demand. In fact, demand is accelerating – Kindle Fire sales increased week over week for each of the past three weeks."

Amazon has never specified Kindle sales before. It hasn't really here either, but it's a lot more than it has ever said previously.

"A few of their many complaints: there is no external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing. The touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky"

...But Amazon officially not saying anything.

Really good review by a reader at The Verge. The takeaway: the Fire does all the things you might want to do with a tablet, if you don't have any particular apps you want to use on it.

Wired isn't aflame: "The Fire isn’t a dud, but its real-world performance and utility match neither the benchmarks of public expectation, nor the standards set by the world’s best tablets.

"The Fire’s 7-inch, 1024×600 screen is too small for many key tablet activities. The Fire’s processor, a 1GHz dual-core chip, appears all but insufficient for fluid, silky-smooth web browsing, an area where I found performance to be preternaturally slow. And unlike most of its tablet competitors, the Fire lacks a camera, 3G data connectivity, and a slot for removable storage.

"As an assembly of physical components, the Fire lives at the bottom of the tablet food chain — and this limits what the Fire can actually do as a piece of mobile hardware. But all those consumers who pre-ordered the Fire knew this going in, right?"

"In a note to clients issued Thursday, RBC's Mike Abramsky shares the results of a ChangeWave survey of 2,600 early adopter types. Two key findings: 5% of those surveyed said they had pre-ordered or were very likely to buy Amazon's (AMZN) new Kindle Fire, exceeding the 4% who said they were very likely to buy the original iPad in 2010; 26% of those 5% said they would delay or put on hold the purchase of a new iPad."

From the graphic (you need to click the link), 47% were looking at buying other gadgets. Overall, 27% weren't looking to buy any other sort of gadget (eg laptop, netbook, other tablet, etc). Some 'early adopters' they are, then.

Even so, bears out the idea that the game is between Amazon and Apple.

What UK?